Abstract

THE PREPOSITION DENTRO DE AS A BORDER MARKER: A COGNITIVE DESCRIPTION. Lingüística [online]. 2013, vol.29, n.1, pp.81-114. ISSN 2079-312X.

The aim of this paper is to improve on the semantic characterization of the Spanish marker dentro de within the framework of Cognitive Linguistics. According to a common view, prepositions en and dentro de are almost identical in being able to express interiority. A more careful examination shows that in fact they express spatial indication in different ways: en brings only an abstract localization whereas dentro de shows more accurately the borderlines of the container. After a brief presentation of the description given by the linguistic literature, this work focuses on the uses of both markers with lexemes denoting places. A comparative analysis is applied to the uses of the two prepositions in order to specify some of the particular features of dentro de. A qualitative study of uses in context allows us to describe the spatial meaning of dentro de in terms of containment and bordering instruction

Keywords : configuration; container; borderlines; localization; preposition.

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